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Full-Text Articles in Law
Liberal Feminist Jurisprudence: Foundational, Enduring, Adaptive, Linda C. Mcclain, Brittany K. Hacker
Liberal Feminist Jurisprudence: Foundational, Enduring, Adaptive, Linda C. Mcclain, Brittany K. Hacker
Faculty Scholarship
Liberal feminism remains a significant strand of feminist jurisprudence in the U.S. Rooted in 19th and 20th century liberal and feminist political theory and women’s rights advocacy, it emphasizes autonomy, dignity, and equality. Liberal feminism’s focus remains to challenge unjust gender-based restrictions based on assumptions about men’s and women’s proper spheres and roles. Second wave liberal legal feminism, evident in Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s constitutional litigation, challenged pervasive sex-based discrimination in law and social institutions and shifted the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause to a more skeptical review of gender-based classifications. Liberal feminists have developed robust conceptions of …
Is(N'T) Catharine Mackinnon A Liberal?, Don Herzog
Is(N'T) Catharine Mackinnon A Liberal?, Don Herzog
Articles
Catharine MacKinnon likes to describe her view as radical feminism or feminism unmodified or feminism, full stop. And she likes to contrast it to liberal feminism, which she sometimes treats with caustic scorn. But is she right to see a contrast here?
Renegotiating The Social Contract, Jennifer S. Hendricks
Renegotiating The Social Contract, Jennifer S. Hendricks
Publications
This review of The Supportive State: Families, Government and America’s Political Ideals highlights Maxine Eichner’s important theoretical contributions to both liberal political theory and feminist theory, applauding her success in reforming liberalism to account for dependency, vulnerability, and families. The review then considers some implications of Eichner’s proposals and their likely reception among feminists. It concludes that The Supportive State is a sound and inspiring response to recent calls that feminist theory move from being strictly a school of criticism to developing a theory of governance.
Feminism As Liberalism: A Tribute To The Work Of Martha Nussbaum Symposium: Honoring The Contributions Of Professor Martha Nussbaum To The Scholarship And Practice Of Gender And Sexuality Law: Feminism And Liberalism, Tracy E. Higgins
Faculty Scholarship
In this essay, I revisit and expand an argument I have made with respect to the limited usefulness of liberalism in defining an agenda for guaranteeing women's rights and improving women's conditions. After laying out this case, I discuss Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach to fundamental rights and human development and acknowledge that her approach addresses to a significant degree many of the objections I and other feminist scholars have raised. I then turn to fieldwork that I have done in South Africa on the issue of custom and women's choices with regard to marriage and divorce. Applying Professor Nussbaum's capabilities …
Empowerment Or Estrangement: Liberal Feminism's Visions Of The “Progress” Of Muslim Women, Cyra Akila Choudhury
Empowerment Or Estrangement: Liberal Feminism's Visions Of The “Progress” Of Muslim Women, Cyra Akila Choudhury
Faculty Publications
This paper presents some thoughts on the progress of Muslim women towards gender justice. It argues that Liberal Legal feminism shares a common understanding of history and progress with those Liberal political theories that justified the British Empire. Because of this genealogy, Liberal feminism seeks to reform cultures and societies that do not comport with a particular Liberal teleology that forecloses the expression of alternative ideas of history, progress, and human flourishing. It further argues that Muslim women's organizations that partner with Northern organizations sometimes seek to fulfill Liberal expectations of victimhood at the hands of their culture. The consequence …
Negotiating Gender And (Free And Equal) Citizenship: The Place Of Associations, Linda C. Mcclain
Negotiating Gender And (Free And Equal) Citizenship: The Place Of Associations, Linda C. Mcclain
Faculty Scholarship
This article focuses on the place of associations within John Rawls's political liberalism and in feminist liberalism. It revisits crucial components of political liberalism in light of feminist criticisms, such as those of Susan Moller Okin and Martha Nussbaum, that political liberalism's protection of associational life hinders women's free and equal citizenship. Offering a different reading of Rawls, it finds greater potential to draw on political liberalism to support such citizenship. It then brings liberal feminist ideas about the place of associations into dialogue with recent feminist work on gender, rights, and culture calling for models of rights within culture …
Universalism, Liberal Theory, And The Problem Of Gay Marriage, Robin West
Universalism, Liberal Theory, And The Problem Of Gay Marriage, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Liberalism, both contemporary and classical, rests at heart on a theory of human nature, and at the center of that theory lies one core commitment: all human beings, qua human beings, are essentially rational. There are two equally important implications. The first we might call the "universalist" assumption: all human beings, not just some, are rational -- not just white people, men, freemen, property owners, aristocrats, or citizens, but all of us. In this central, defining respect, then, we are all the same: we all share in this universal, natural, human trait. The second implication, we might call the "individualist" …